The Enormous Ignorance of God

When God Doesn't Know the Future Choices of Man

John Piper

John Piper is founder and teacher of desiringGod.org and chancellor of Bethlehem College & Seminary. For 33 years, he served as pastor of Bethlehem Baptist Church, Minneapolis, Minnesota. He is author of more than 50 books, including A Peculiar Glory.

John Piper

John Piper is founder and teacher of desiringGod.org and chancellor of Bethlehem College & Seminary. For 33 years, he served as pastor of Bethlehem Baptist Church, Minneapolis, Minnesota. He is author of more than 50 books, including A Peculiar Glory.

In what follows, when I refer to God's knowing I mean his
certain knowing, not his extraordinary ability to deduce
probabilities from known facts. In the view that I am concerned to
understand, namely, the view of Greg Boyd and others concerning the
foreknowledge of God, what is denied is certainty in God concerning
future volitions of human beings, and what is affirmed is the human
capacity to contradict God's best prognoses, because of the
God-given capacity of creative free choice.

For God not to know future volitions of humans is not a small
ignorance but a huge one, unimaginably huge. It is, for example,
not a periodic ignorance, but a continual one; not a narrow
ignorance, but a universally human one; not an insignificant
ignorance, but a tremendously significant one; not a confined
ignorance, but a diverse one (relating to all things a person can
choose).

1. Diverse Ignorance

It is a diverse ignorance. In all my waking moments (and perhaps
in my dreams) my will is inclining one way or the other concerning
this or that thought to think, this or that emotions or attitude to
savor or resist, this or that word to speak, or this or that
movement of the body to make. Of all these diverse acts of mind,
emotion, and body, God is ignorant up to the actual point of
volition that performs or shapes them. So God does not know for
sure my thoughts, the full nature of my emotions or attitudes, my
words or my bodily acts one second before they come to pass. His
ignorance is as diverse as are the aspects of life affected by
human volition.

This would also include not only the thoughts, emotions,
attitudes, words, and deeds happening in me, but also all the
effects that come from all those acts of my will. Thus the
diversity of the ignorance expands to the physical effects on my
body that actually result from my thoughts and emotions, and the
effects of my emotions on all the other people and things in my
life. (God can know what effects would come if I release and do not
resist anger or joy or gratitude or lust, but he cannot know the
actual effects on people or things.) God does not know if my
unresisted anger will result in a harsh word or a sneer or a swing
of the fist or the pull of a trigger. He does not know if my
unresisted discouragement will result in my not going to work or my
committing suicide or my walking away from my marriage. He does not
know if my chosen word will be one that saves life (as when my wife
hollered, "Johnny!" as I started to step into Cambridge traffic a
few years ago) or destroys life (as when a gang leader says,
"Shoot!"). He does not know if my chosen deeds will make an
airplane crash or cause a law to pass.

It also is evident, therefore, that the immense diversity of
God's ignorance unleashes an even more immense ignorance of the
diversity of effects resulting from each of the unknown thoughts,
emotions, words, and deeds. Every volition as it produces or shapes
thought, emotion, word, and deeds is like a cue ball that hits a
triangle of billiard balls. The path of every one is unknown ahead
of time by God. This, I say, is an immense ignorance because most
of the events in the emotional, intellectual, verbal, and material
world are caused or shaped by acts of human volition directly or
indirectly. Of all these countless things God is ignorant until
they actually happen.

2. Universally Human Ignorance

Now multiply the immense diversity of God's ignorance of my
thoughts, emotions, words, and deeds times all the humans in the
world. Not only is there a huge divine ignorance of my diverse life
of thought, emotion, attitude, word, and deed, but he is also
ignorant of all of that in all people everywhere who have wills.
Race or age or intellect or sex or education or tribe does not
limit his ignorance. As far as diversity in human nature and
culture extend, so far does God's ignorance extend of what
thoughts, emotions, attitudes, words, and deeds every person will
choose or shape by his or her volition. Everywhere at all times God
is ignorant of all volitions and their effects up to the instant
that they are performed by our creative wills.

3. Continual Ignorance

I said above that God is ignorant at all times of what volitions
are yet future. Let the magnitude of this ignorance sink in. His
ignorance of my thoughts, emotions, attitudes, words, and deeds up
to the instant they happen is followed by a continual ignorance
that very next instant of what thoughts, emotions, attitudes,
words, and deeds may be brought to pass or shaped immediately on
the heels of the acts just performed. Thus the instant God gains
knowledge of my thoughts, emotions, words, and deeds, the extent
and durability of what he now knows is unknown since it may be
affected this way or that by the next instance's volition. Thus God
is not accumulating useful knowledge with each instance's
actualized volition, but is rather besieged by a relentless,
never-ending, second-by-second onslaught of immense ignorance that
actually causes the knowledge he just gained to be of no certain
use since its possible effects in the world of ceaseless new
volitions are also unknowable to him.

For example, God discovers that a man chooses to swerve his car
into the oncoming traffic the instant the choice is made and the
car swerves; but this knowledge is of little use because it is
possible in the very next fraction of a second the man's free will
may prompt him to swerve back so that if God should miraculously
push an oncoming car off into the shoulder with a puff of wind, the
man may in that very instant will to swerve to the shoulder. And so
the second-by-second free acting of the driver's will runs ahead of
God's knowledge and keeps him continually off balance and ignorant
until the crash happens or doesn't happen. This continual
uninterrupted ignorance of God is therefore immense.

4. Tremendously Significant Ignorance

The ignorance of future human volitions is not insignificant
ignorance. Aside from purely natural events like wind, rain,
lightening, heat of summer, cold of winter, aging, gravity,
subatomic motion of electrons, animal behavior, etc., virtually all
the significant reality in life and family and society and nations
is the fruit of human volition. All technology, family dynamics,
church life, legislation, military affairs, telecommunications,
media, literature, drama, theater, architecture, transportation,
food production, utilities, etc., etc., are created, shaped,
sustained, and guided through moment-by-moment human volition. All
of which God is ignorant until it comes to pass. Thus the entire
fabric of culture in all its immense significance is being woven
without God's knowledge of how each moment, hour, day, month, year,
and decade will take shape.

5. Closing Question

Is this the God of the Bible? They would say probably that God
can indeed plan and govern, because humans also plan and govern
even though they are ignorant like this. Only God understands all
relevant influences and so is much more knowing of probabilities
than man is and so can plan much better than man can. In other
words, God has the same kind of knowledge man does only he's better
at it. He can make more probable prognoses concerning what man is
about to do. But he is likely to be surprised a million times over.
That is, the degree to which men really are free and creative and
not governed by circumstance or genetics God shares in the immense
ignorance spoken of above.